A Long Obedience

In our monthly small groups we are slowly working our way through Eugene Peterson's A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society a wonderful study of the Psalms of Ascents (120-134). I highly recommend it. This week I am preparing the study guide for Psalm 125 "Security." Peterson has been commenting on how Israel and the believer can become "saw-toothed;" up one day, down the next in a endless cycle. There is a way out.

"We learn to live not by our feeling about God but by the facts of God... My feelings are important for many things. They are essential and valuable. They keep me aware of much that is true and real. But they tell me next to nothing about God or my relation to God. My security come from who God is, not how I feel. Discipleship is a decision to live by what I know about God, not by what I feel about him or myself or my neighbors. "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people." The image that announces the dependable, unchanging, safe, secure existence of God's people comes from geology, not psychology." (Page 87).

Read also Psalm 46.